Inside the Walls
by I-survived-life
Summary: Hogwarts was always the safe haven for everyone. It was the place that no one could get hurt. But as everyone knows, even in the strongest structure things can begin to crumble. What if the safe haven isn't so safe anymore?


"Dorcas Meadowes, that is the most disgusting sound on this planet," Lily Evans said shooting her friend a disgusted look as she sat down across from her at the Gryffindor table. If there was one thing that Lily couldn't stand it was people chewing with their mouth open.

"And Lily has arrived people," Dorcas said grinning and throwing her arms up in a V with her hands closed into fists. Lily rolled her eyes and loaded some pancakes onto her plate. Lily wasn't much of a "hello" sort of person and she didn't believe in good mornings. Most of the times, she just walked in, commented on something and sat down to eat breakfast.

"You always say that Lily or something like that," Mary said giggling. "'Oh James, you are the most annoying person on the planet.' 'Oh Dorcas, you have the eating habits of an animal!'" Mary imitated Lily putting on a really high-pitched voice.

"I do not sound like that!" Lily exclaimed going pink in the face. If she was being totally honest, that was exactly how she sounded, minus the high-pitched voice. She just couldn't resist commenting on everything, it was one of her many habits and one of the reasons why no one like watching movies with her.

"You so do!" Dorcas exclaimed laughing at how red Lily had gone. She looked like a tomato and the colour was so unattractive that it was funny.

"I don't see you all summer and this is what I'm greeted with."

"Hey, I haven't seen you all summer and I'm greeted with you commenting on how I chew my food," Dorcas pointed out.

"Chewing with your mouth open is disgusting and annoying. Everyone knows that, I don't need to see the food that you're chewing nor do I want to hear it either."

"Lily, let it go, Dorcas will forever be disgusting," Marlene said joining the conversation. She'd known her friends for so long that she knew what they were talking about even if she only heard one side of the conversation. She called it a gift, Lily referred to it as weird.

"Oh, so I chew with my mouth open and I'm disgusting but Marlene's pigsty of a room is totally okay," Dorcas said in an offended tone.

"My room is not a pigsty!" Marlene cried going into her arguing mode. She glared at Dorcas and pointed her fork at her in a threatening way.

"Marlene, the last time I slept in your room I woke up to your hamster or a rat crawling over my face and your owl's arse over my eyes. Your room is a pigsty, I don't know how you live in it."

"The only reason it was like that was because you were coming over and I know how much of a neat freak you are so I figured I'd just let you clean my room for me. I can't believe you actually thought my mother would let me keep my room that dirty," Marlene said switching moods in about two seconds.

"Yeah, same here," Mary said looking up at the staff table to see if McGonagall was done her breakfast yet.

"Hold on a minute, if you all leave your rooms messy for me to clean then why is Lily's room the only clean one?"

"Petunia's even more of a neat freak than you are Dorcas, she may hate me but she hates messes more so if I leave my room messy then she'll just clean it up," Lily said shrugging and finishing up her breakfast. Dorcas looked around at everyone trying to get angry but she really couldn't.

"How long has Mary been stalking McGonagall then?" Lily asked glancing over at her friend. Mary took her eyes off of McGonagall to look at Lily and stick out her tongue in response to what Lily had said. Lily giggled at the sight of her friend acting so childish, Mary really wasn't great at comebacks.

"I have not been stalking McGonagall," Mary said tying up her hair. She looked back at McGonagall completely proving her statement wrong. Lily looked between Mary and McGonagall and had to bite her tongue to keep herself from laughing. McGonagall could see Mary, that much was obvious considering that she avoided looking anywhere near where the girls were sitting.

It was the first day back at school and everyone was still catching up with friends that they hadn't seen over the summer. The majority of people had probably been up all of last night talking about what had happened to them while they were on vacation. As anyone who's been a teenager knows, however, it takes more than several hours to tell your friends about how your summer was.

Lily and her friends had been so tired the night before that they hadn't bothered talking at all and had simply thrown themselves onto their beds and gone to sleep. Lily was going to ask everyone what they had done over their holidays but never got the chance because McGonagall had come up behind her silently.

"Ms Macdonald you may stop staring at me, I am here with your timetables," McGonagall said -making Lily jump in her seat- and handed Mary her timetable first before giving everyone else theirs. "Next time, I would suggest not being quite so obvious about the fact that you want me to hurry up and finish my breakfast, I apologize for startling you Ms Evans," McGonagall added before making her way down the table and leaving a very red Mary behind.

"So, I was going to ask you about what you-" Lily started leaning on her elbows. Mary cut her off however and got up slinging her backpack over her shoulder and staring down at her timetable with a look of concentration on her face.

"Sorry Lily, I've got to go and talk to Professor Hemphria about something," and she was off to go talk to the Astronomy teacher about who knew what. Mary seemed to have forgotten that anyone else was there and hurried out of the Great Hall. Lily never got the chance to tell her that her skirt was stuck in her underwear.

She sighed in resignation and when Mary came to her later furious about the fact that her arse had just been flashed at everyone, Lily would calmly remind her that she had left the place in such a hurry no one even got a chance to say goodbye. Hogwarts Mary had arrived and it seemed she would be even more focused and driven than the last couple of years.

"Anyone else taking Astronomy with Mary?" Marlene asked snatching Lily and Dorcas' timetable out of their hands to see what classes they had together. Lily had most of her classes with Marlene, some with Dorcas and very few with Mary. As much as Lily loved Mary, she could be a bit of a handful when she got super intense about homework. There was once a time when Lily sat through a two hour lecture by Mary about how Professor Slughorn could teach his classes better.

"Looks like all four of us have Care of Magical Creatures together!" Marlene exclaimed. She gave Lily and Dorcas back their respective timetables, pleased with the fact that they would be together for at least one subject.

"Remind me again why we decided to take Care of Magical Creatures?" Dorcas asked Marlene over her pumpkin juice.

"We're taking it because we like Professor Kettleburn and because it's on the way to Hagrid's and we like Hagrid as well," Marlene replied.

"I may like Hagrid but I sure as hell don't like his food," Dorcas muttered to herself quietly. The three friends sat in silence not saying anything and lost in their own thoughts. Lily was thinking about her problems with Petunia and how much she would love to stick a fork in Vernon and see if he felt it. She was brought out of her thoughts by Dorcas making a sort of grunt about something that was obviously displeasing her.

"Anything wrong, Dorcas?" Lily asked her friend.

"I need to talk to McGonagall about something, I don't remember signing up for Muggle Studies. I barely passed the class last year," and with that, Dorcas was off as well.

"Seems like it's only you and me Marlene, come on, let's go get our stuff for our first class," Lily replied getting up. The two of them rushed up to Gryffindor Tower almost trampling a few students in the younger years and knocking over some very annoyed seventh years. Lily dug through her trunk for her Transfiguration book while Marlene dug through her closet for her Charms textbook.

Once they were equipped with what they needed, Marlene and Lily left the common room and while Lily headed to Transfiguration, Marlene ran for Charms. The halls were filled with students who had finished their breakfast and were hurrying to class. It was difficult to move past people and Lily was almost shoved to the ground several times. Apparently being a Prefect didn't guarantee no one pushing you out of their way (something that Lily should've known by now since she'd had the position for a year).

Just when she thought that things couldn't get any worse than they already were, Remus showed up with some very bad news.

"LILY! LILY! DAMN IT! LILY! TURN AROUND WOMAN!" Remus yelled as he pushed students out of his way and hurried after Lily. The first few times she didn't hear him but once Remus had gotten close enough she recognized his voice and the swears that he was yelling rather loudly. She stopped and waited to for him to catch up to her impatiently.

"Yes, Remus?"

"I have a message to deliver for you from His Royal Pratness," Remus said rolling his eyes.

"James?"

"Not even close, it's from Amos. He says that there's a meeting today in the staff room, we have to be there by seven."

"The staff room? Isn't that for the teachers?"

"Yes, but apparently we're allowed to use it for Prefect meetings now. I don't know why Amos wanted it that way, the classrooms were just fine but anyway, we have to be there at seven."

"Anything else, Remus?" Lily asked him and began to tap her foot. It was something that Lily did whenever she was in a hurry or getting impatient.

"Yeah, Amos wants to talk to you after the meeting, he said to wait until everyone left and then he'd talked to you," at this Remus' expression turned to one of annoyance. He didn't like Amos anymore than Lily did and as much as he knew that Lily would hate it, he'd wait outside of the room for her. There was just something about Amos that put him off and made Remus cautious of him. It was something other than what James called "the Prat Factor" whenever Amos was brought up and he got jealous.

"That's just lovely, because I really want to spend time with Amos. I just crave being in his company so damn much," Lily said sarcastically. She sighed and looked up and down the almost empty hallway -there were only a few students left that were getting to class.

"Thanks for telling me Remus, now, if you'll excuse me, I have Transfiguration to get to. McGonagall is going to kill me if I'm late for her class on the very first day."

"Ah, yes, the Wrath of McGonagall, it's always the worst on the first day of school for some reason," Remus said grinning and starting backing down the hallway so that he could get to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Lily returned the smile, yelled goodbye and ran down the corridor. She came to a screeching halt outside of McGonagall's class and burst through the door slightly out of breath.

Luckily for Lily, McGonagall was only walking to the front of the class, she'd just barely made it. Still, that didn't stop a frown from forming McGonagall's face and glaring at Lily as she sat down. Usually, she and Lily were on good terms, Lily being one of the best students and all but even the Wrath of McGonagall extended to Lily on the first day of classes.

"Next time Ms Evans, do try to make it a few minutes before class is about to start," McGonagall said sternly and turned to the front completely ignoring Lily who was opening her mouth to protest. And so the lesson went on. McGonagall did a quick review over what the class had done last year and proceeded to give them notes on what the first chapter of the textbook was about. She was a no nonsense type of woman and preferred to move on with things instead of thinking about what had happened in the past, even if it was only for lessons.

Defense was slightly more interesting. The class was informed that they would be learning about Patronus's for a large portion of the year. For the first lesson, however, everyone would simply start out with a quick review of what everyone had learned last year. Not that Lily really needed it but she was grateful to the teachers that did these reviews anyway. It gave her a chance to make sure that she really did remember everything that she'd learned last year and in case she forgot something, she got a chance to remember it again.

The first day of classes weren't always the most interesting and to be quite honest, they were all just outright boring. Some, who were like Lily, tried to pay attention in class, really, they did, but they just couldn't stay focused on what the teacher was saying and more often than not, ended up zoning out. Those who were like Mary and were devoted to school to the point where it was downright scary, however, paid rapt attention to the teacher and soaked in every word that they were saying.

Care of Magical Creatures was not a boring class. How could a class where you learned about animals that could seriously maim, injure or kill you ever be boring? Especially when it was taught by Professor Kettleburn, contained James Potter and Sirius Black and some very smelly Hippogriff dung.

Everything had been going smoothly, Professor Kettleburn had decided that the class wouldn't dive into learning about new animals just yet and instead had everyone feeding and cleaning three Hippogriffs. Either Professor Kettleburn hadn't learned his lesson yet or he purposely put James and Sirius in the same group, either way, the result was the same: chaos.

"Hey, Sirius, what would you rather do than go and live with your family?" James asked Sirius a mischievous look on his face. Sirius didn't bother turning around but kept feeding the Hippogriff that he and James were assigned to look after.

"I'd rather eat Hippogriff dung than live with my parents," Sirius answered. Lily watched as a giant grin came on James' face and was beginning to worry about what was going to happen. She back away from the two boys even though they weren't very close to her and hid behind her brown-feathered Hippogriff.

"Oh good, I was hoping you'd say that," James said bending down and picking up a rather large lump of what appeared to be Hippogriff dung. He cradled the smelly and disgusting lump in his hand, getting ready to throw it.

"What are you -" Sirius began to say as he turned around to face James but stopped mid-sentence as James flung the Hippogriff dung at his best mates face. The smelly lump made contact with Sirius's face with a disgusting smack and stayed there while Sirius blinked rapidly to try and keep his eyes clean.

With a perfectly serious look on his face, Sirius bent down, picked up some poop and walked up to James. He stopped in front of James and without breaking eye contact, brought his hand down on the head of his best friend and smooshed the crap in his hand all over James' hair.

"DUNG WAR!" yelled James.

"RUN!" Dorcas yelled and she, Lily, Marlene and Mary bolted. They ran away from their Care of Magical Creatures class and ran for Hagrid's hut that was nearby. They banged their fists on the door and yelled until they heard Hagrid open the door. They rushed past him, shut the door and stood in front of one of his small windows looking at the chaos that used to be their class.

"Again, why did we decide to take Care of Magical Creatures?"

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

**A/N:** I felt like writing a slightly depressing Lily and James story so here it is. Things get more serious as the story goes on. Feel free to let me know what you think! thank you to cynical tda for the wonderful cover image!


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